


Tentacles: A Love Story

by rekishi



Series: One Step Closer [2]
Category: Coldfire - Friedman
Genre: Other, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-18
Updated: 2009-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-04 13:51:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rekishi/pseuds/rekishi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Insert set in "One Step Closer", after the ship rocked and Damien and Gerald were thrown to the floor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tentacles: A Love Story

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magistera](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magistera/gifts).



They picked themselves up from the floor and made their way out the cabin door, which wasn't made easier by the still pitching floor of the rocking vessel. Shouts started to reach them as they neared the steps leading on deck, water streamed into the hold, making the footing even more treacherous, threatening to make them sprawl once more.

The sight that greeted them upon reaching the deck wasn't easy for Damien to absorb. He saw people dressed for the night staring disbelievingly, passengers all of them. The assembled crew was staring as well, but with much less disbelief, and they were talking among themselves in quiet voices, just loud enough to be understood by the man next to them. 

The ship was still pitching up and down but now he was able to make out the source: Tentacles as thick as tree trunks were wrapped around the hull and the main mast.

A giant kraken had taken the ship and everyone on it captive.

Damien had never believed these creatures could exist. The Sirens of Novatlantis were famous, brought to Erna as one of the most popular ancient tales of seafarers from Earth; but while the stories of giant kraken did exist, none had ever been seen. This had always been attributed to the fact that deep water currents of fae were not being affected by human thought. It seemed that assumption had been a mistake.

Finally, he managed to make eye contact with one of the sailors just as he managed to find his voice again. "What?"

Gerald had come to a halt several feet away and Damien could see his mouth moving while shaking his head.

The sailor was coming towards the priest now, not looking as worried as Damien might have expected in the given situation. "What's happening?" he shouted in order to be heard over the creak of the wood, the still streaming waters.

"Well, you see," the man shouted back, "we hoped this wouldn't happen, so we didn't warn you guys. It's not the right year, we're not quite in the right place, you see."

Tarrant had listened in on their exchange and was now slowly coming closer. "Does this mean," he inquired in an impossibly quiet tone of voice, "that this has happened before?" The sailor started to look extremely uncomfortable, as all of them did when Gerald was in physical proximity to them.

It was Rozca's booming voice that answered just in the moment when, impossibly, the kraken lifted its giant head above the waves. "We don't advertise their existence to anyone, if we don't have to. You will hear no tales of them in the dockside inns for several peculiar reasons." His next words were lost in the roar of water hitting the deck and the sounds of the creature itself.

It had a massive beak on it's underside and a multitude of beady eyes dotted the webbing between its tentacles as well as its head. The brown in color, it suddenly started to ripple, white flushing over the massive body. The eyes seemed to roam the ship.

"Which reasons?" Damien and Tarrant demanded in the same moment, exchanging a quick glance when they noticed.

Rozca chewed on something, possibly the inside of his own cheek, as his eyes narrowed. "Every couple of years something like this happens to a ship. Taken captive by one of these giant kraken, we suspect most of them to be female. There have been reports about even larger specimens but they're...different. And this changing of colors is a...sure sign."

"Sure sign of what?" Damien growled and tried to divide his attention equally between the captain and the creature. When the other man didn't answer, Damien wanted to throttle him. "Sure sign of _what_, damn you?"

In that moment several things happened. Gerald whispered, "Is it possible?" and the kraken produced a sound that was very much like the rumbling a house cat might make when it felt content. The whole hull of the ship vibrated, only amplified when the animal released one of its tentacles from the vessel and slowly but certainly reached it towards the four men standing at midship.

"The kraken, especially the females, are looking for mates. They choose one man from whatever ship they single out and take him with them. Those men reappear after a few days save and sound, albeit exhausted and...well, completely blissed out. The women... When there is a male and it choses one of the women, we don't usually see them again. And the rippling color is a sure sign or. Well. She's in heat, Damien."

The priest was too horrified and fascinated at the same time by that snaking tentacle and by all their inability to move according to their own will, their feet rooted to the planks, to look at the captain. Instead, he watched as the limb stretched towards Gerald, who seemed to understand and whose gaze turned from curiosity to being utterly horrified. The sound changed from purring to air bubbles ascending to the surface and breaking there.

Damien could do nothing but look back and forth between the creature and his companion. "I guess we have a chosen one, now." Tarrant turned a poisonous glare at him. After all these years of traveling together though, there was no reason for him to be affected any by it. "It likes you, Gerald." And to the captain, but without taking his eyes from the spectacle just like everyone else on deck, "Why do you let it happen?"

"Easy. Seas are rough enough as it is, and no ship that has ever given a man freely over to the kraken has suffered any damage on its journey." The bubbling had increased in frequency and Damien couldn't help himself but thinking it sounded...happy.

"Gerald-"

"Shut up, Vryce." The man had broken through the spell that was keeping them all in the same spot and now tried to invade the fleshy arm.

"Maybe if you would just pet it-"

"I said shut up, Vryce. I am certainly not going to deliver myself- What. How dare you!"

The captain had nodded to two of his men who had acted lightning fast and taken hold of Gerald, for once not caring who and what he was, who was too surprised in the first moment to react in any way that might have made them release him. The tentacle finally reached him, wrapped around his upper body like a large snake and the purring started up again. A strange sensation and a stranger sound, since the bubbling didn't stop.

The Neocount of Merentha kept up his protests but seemed unable to reach his sword and thereby release his power. His outraged voice only stopped when he was dragged below the water level. The other tentacles released the ship and set it almost gently back down onto onto the waves of Novatlantis.

It was several days later when a very wet, very pissed off Gerald Tarrant was pulled from the ocean in the middle of the night. He refused to look at anyone but Damien and his glare spoke volumes. Damien, though, couldn't help but be gleefully satisfied by what had come to pass.

"I seriously wonder why it's always you who gets the girl."

Tarrant kept stalking towards his cabin, soaked and obviously uncomfortable. "That's a burden you have to live with when you're as handsome, powerful, charismatic and well read as I am."

From the deep rose a purring sound and Damien could just see a small shudder running through Gerald's frame.

-Fin-

**Author's Note:**

> _The Kraken_,   
> by Alfred Lord Tennyson
> 
> Below the thunders of the upper deep;  
>  Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,  
>  His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep  
>  The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee  
>  About his shadowy sides; above him swell  
>  Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;  
>  And far away into the sickly light,  
>  From many a wondrous grot and secret cell  
>  Unnumber'd and enormous polypi  
>  Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.  
>  There hath he lain for ages, and will lie  
>  Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,  
>  Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;  
>  Then once by man and angels to be seen,  
>  In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.


End file.
